


that's one way to lose these walking blues

by ballantine



Series: Graceland [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Cooking, Gen, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 07:38:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19146493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine
Summary: On the morning of the fifty-first day after Miranda took stock of the wreckage of her family and life and swore vengeance, she woke up thinking about parboiled potatoes.(Pre-series AU: John Silver arrives in Nassau ten years early and meetsan off-balance James Flint adjusting to a life of piracya Miranda Barlow adjusting to aggressive boredom.)





	that's one way to lose these walking blues

**Author's Note:**

> Well, shit, I guess I got myself a 'verse.
> 
> Title from Paul Simon's "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes"

On the morning of the fifty-first day after Miranda took stock of the wreckage of her family and life and swore vengeance, she woke up thinking about parboiled potatoes.

A cock crowed somewhere; by the sound of it, the bird was perched right outside her bedroom window. The blinding Caribbean sun was already filling the room, though according to her timepiece it was just past six. Her sleep in this place had been uniformly light and fitful, and she never slept in.

“Your turn to call for tea, Thomas,” she murmured, and rolled over to bury her face in a pillow that smelled stubbornly of only herself, and not even herself, but whoever she was now.

* * *

The subject of potatoes returned to her after she had an egg and steeped her tea. She eyed the sack in the corner of the cottage and slowly sipped. The longer she could prolong the tea drinking, the longer she could put off deciding what to do with her day.

It was not that she didn't have much to do – chores and cooking and then cleaning up the cooking had a way of claiming a ghastly amount of her time. Her tea drinking was the only point in the day where she could pretend there was a choice in any of it.

James was due to return to port today, and she wanted, for once, to have a decent meal with him. A decent meal and good conversation. But to have a decent meal, she needed to figure out how to properly cook a potato.

Thomas would find this dilemma amusing, each mediocre plate of food an excuse for self-deprecating humor. If he were here now, she imagined it would feel so very different.

She would present him with his single hard-boiled egg in the morning, perhaps with a fanciful garnish of the crabgrass that stubbornly invaded the garden on the plate beneath the egg cup. She would say something like, _looks like it's going to be another hot one, Mr. Barlow_. And he'd eat the egg with ostentatious appreciation, _mighty fine egg, Mrs. Barlow_ , and kiss her forehead. He'd go break open the blisters on his hands from handling the garden how and mutter curses quietly thinking she wouldn't hear. They'd muddle through the day and then James would arrive home, and they'd all laugh about Thomas's sunburnt ears over dinner.

James would look at their unadorned faces and take their scraped and sore hands in his and ask _do you still think it was it worth it_ and maybe, if Thomas was there, the answer would be _yes._

She entertained this maudlin train of thought for the duration of her tea, and then she banished it to wither under the full sun like the roots of the crabgrass she'd pulled the day before. A decent meal and good conversation: these things were not yet impossible, and she was determined to accomplish them.

But first: how to cook a decent potato. If she had another parboiled dinner, she thought she'd go mad. It was a foolish, weak thought – unworthy of utterance or even the energy it took to think it. But after another night spearing a quartered potato and meeting resistance, another night of staring down at the pale, variegated branching at the center of an undercooked spud, she was rather over doubting the worthiness of the complaint.

James never said anything about the cooking. She supposed with the adventures he has had over the years and the hardships he weathered in the Navy, poorly cooked meals wouldn't even register.

Nevertheless.

She finished her tea and set the cup carefully back in its place before turning to face the cottage.

Every quest for vengeance had smaller steps that went unseen and unrecorded for posterity. The making of a home, the assemblage of a life – this was her part of the job.

“Think of England,” she murmured. This somehow didn't lend the verve to her sweeping that she had hoped.

* * *

She set out for town in the late morning, intending to pick up fresh stores for the week ahead and glimpse a human face other than the suspicious parishioners around the local estate. She met difficulty at every turn. Bruised fruit from the fruit sellers. Debris siftings from the tea merchants. Sugar and flour marked up due to bad weather off the colonies. She arrived at the bakehouse to pick up an order of bread and met one final disappointment.

“'Fraid we won't have any more 'til next week, madam,” the baker told her. “New shipment of flour due then. Storms tossed the _Intrepid_ something awful, lost them half their cargo.”

“Yes, I heard about that,” she said, appropriately stoic while privately absorbing the blow and doubling over in vexation. This _day_... “That's really too bad – what do you have left?”

“Sold our cassava stock for the day, excepting a spare dozen rusk biscuits, but they're second pressings.” The baker glanced from her to the young dark-haired man loitering in the corner, drawing her eye as well.

The man met her curious gaze with a bright-eyed smile. “I couldn't help but overhear,” he began.

“Hard to avoid when one lingers so close by,” she said.

The smile did not waver so much as transform, acknowledging the reprimand without ceding guilt. “Forgive me, I'm at loose ends for the afternoon. I'm new to Nassau and sociable by nature. My curiosity got the better of me.”

Miranda had not lived in London for most of her life to be drawn in by passing friendliness on the street. Her expression must have indicated some of this, for the man visibly cut himself off and hastened to reach his point.

“I can spare some of my bread. I'm newly a ship's cook and perhaps ordered more than we need for our next voyage.”

“I have no need for rusk biscuits,” she said, to the baker as much as the man, though she spared a polite smile for the former. “Good day.”

She nodded to them both and exited the shop, thinking that would be the end of the matter.

“I have cassava bread,” the man called, having stepped out after her. She turned around, faintly incredulous, and found him standing in the shade beneath the awning. He shrugged and added, “My captain is – particular. We order cassava bread for all local trips.”

Miranda did not know if it was boredom or her poor spirits reveling in an opportunity for airing, but she actually drew closer instead of away. “And how does he feel about his cook skimming ship stores for personal profit?”

His eyebrows shot up. “Well, now – ”

“That is what you're suggesting, is it not?”

“A negligible amount,” he defended, after a moment's fraught debate with himself. “But no one will notice the difference and this way we build relations within the community.”

This last was said with such an egregiously winsome smile, such unbelievably thick charm, she found herself suppressing a smile of her own. She looked away to further shield her wayward amusement from notice.

The street was mostly empty, the midday heat sending most people indoors. It all could not be more different than a London street scene, excepting this vaguely disreputable negotiator by her side. Thomas had always been easily taken in by such street dealers and urchins, his pockets always ringing a little lighter after every brief constitutional.

A decent meal and good conversation. Her hours remaining before James came home were dwindling, and she still had so much to do.

“How much?” she asked, turning back.

* * *

“I'm not actually a very good cook,” John confessed to her over their second drink. He had a habit of sharing character defects in casual conversation, and it was oddly disarming.

“I'm shocked to hear it,” she said drily.

They were in a small tavern on the country side outskirts of Nassau: a place small and discreet and mostly frequented by working men and women of the non-shipping trades. They were drinking beer, which Miranda had never had before coming to New Providence, but now she respected for its refreshing qualities on beastly hot days such as this one.

John was a congenial and intelligent young man, and she didn't trust him an inch. But he was polite and met her eyes when he spoke, like he actually saw a person beneath the somber braid of hair.

They had traded horror stories from Transatlantic voyages. She told him of the curious daily habits of the Puritans with whom she shared a cabin; he talked of a berthmate who'd somehow smuggled a monkey on board that had gotten loose and lived in the rigging for the duration of the trip, throwing its feces down upon the crew whenever it disliked the direction of the wind. The monkey, John told her, did not care to go to Virginia.

As to cooking, he had this to say: “I can get by while at sea – the crew are used to worse. Their last cook's repertoire included porridge, blackened beef. Blackened pork.” He paused, considering. “Also blackened cod, which I gather wasn't as bad.”

“I see the pattern.”

He raised his glass. “Just so.”

“I'm afraid I don't have any tips to offer you,” she said. “I'm not much of a cook myself.”

She didn't miss the way his eyes sharpened. “New to the work as well, are you?”

People the world over lose station and money without it being a scandal or noteworthy in any way. She felt safe in admitting at least, “My family used to employ a cook.” She smiled, a little rueful. “Wish I'd paid better attention.”

“Perhaps you can help me,” he said, and she had barely begun to tense before he continued, “Can you tell me what pig is supposed to look like roasted? I've never had it and I'm supposed to cook one in a couple weeks.”

She pretended to think it over while leaning back from the table. Whether it was the beer or the quiet pleasure of being among people again, she was surprised to be enjoying herself. She wanted to prolong it.

“I'll make you a deal,” she said eventually, turning her smile from the late afternoon sun to her companion.

“My dear lady, you've already bargained me down on the bread.”

“You should be thankful I don't find your captain and report you,” she said tartly. “Besides, this would be more of a – barter, I believe the term is. I'll help you with your pig problem, if you can tell me how to cook potatoes so they are uniformly tender. Do you know how to do that?”

He laughed lightly, one hand coming up to tug on an earlobe. He said, teeth flashing around honest surprise, “I can, actually. That, I can do.”

Miranda smiled a little, and this time she did not hide it.

* * *

It was approaching twilight when she arrived home. The horses had been grateful for the midday reprieve and required little in the way of soothing once released from their harness.

The same could not, unfortunately, be said of James. He stood silhouetted in the doorway, still in his coat and boots.

“Coming or going?” she inquired gaily, moving forward with light steps. But when she entered the light of the cottage, she saw that he was pale and faintly trembling, and gravity resumed exerting its full force upon her.

“Where the hell were you?” he demanded harshly. The words would sound chastising but for the shake in his voice. “I came back and you – it began to grow dark, and – ”

She didn't know what the strangest part of her life in this place was – the vast stretches of emptiness she was free to fill, or remembering there was still someone who cared how she did it.

She took his hand and said quietly, “I apologize, James. I was in town and the day got away from me.” She glanced around the cottage, noting the table settings he had put out, and the steaming pot hanging over the fireplace. “Have you eaten? Take off your coat and boots, I swept earlier,” she said, moving past him to investigate the pot. It was stew: rich and aromatic.

James took a moment to obey. His movements were jerky and uncertain, his expression still disconcerted.

“I was waiting for you,” he said belatedly, turning back to the table in just his white shirt.

“Well then, let's eat and we can update each other on our mutual progress.” She filled two bowls with stew and brought them over to the table.

James sat down in an awkward bump. He was still watching her closely, and seemed to care not at all that his dinner was before him. “You were in town?”

“Yes.”

He nodded and picked up his spoon. He paused. “You were drinking. Beer?”

“Yes.” She surreptitiously poked a potato; it skewered easily. Damn him. She sighed out a smile and met his eyes. “And I think I made a friend.”


End file.
